Gift Retailer Profiles

This section is for and about gift retailers. Each article is packed with useful information, some brought to you directly by the retailers themselves. Articles include Q & A’s, new store openings and success stories about your fellow gift shop retailers.

It isn’t that The Old Country Store in Moultonborough, NH, has been around almost since the dawn of American independence. What’s amazing about this gift shop is that it has consistently been a profitable operation. Find out how.

You can’t miss it. At the intersection of Highway 25 and Route 109 in Moultonborough, NH, lies what is likely America’s oldest gift shop: The Old Country Store and Museum.

The store’s co-owner, Stephen Holden, discusses the gift shop’s long and storied history with the air of a passionately approachable scholar. “The building was first opened in 1781,” he says, quick to point out the significance of the date: “This was the year the American Revolutionaries forced the surrender of General Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia, thus securing the dream of American Independence.” Holden returns to this theme often: the idea of the Old Country Store being a place where history informs the present, transforming the gift shop into a unique shopping adventure.

In fact, that “museum” that’s tacked on to the name? It is housed upstairs and features artifacts as diverse as the building’s original post office boxes, axes and saws used in local lumberjack competitions, an 1847 issue Concord Coach Company stagecoach, and working 19th-century iceboxes.

Most gift stores these days have a presence online. But what if an online-only business decided to branch out to brick-and-mortar? GIFT SHOP explores the challenges and possibilities of this business move.
Continue Reading »

What steps can retailers adopt to follow up on customers who have attended an in-store event? What should retailers do after an event to get the maximum benefits from it? In-store events are key to success in today's competitive retail market—and
Continue Reading »